The Left’s Alinsky Plan to Destroy the Trump Administration

When a former community organizer with little other experience became the Democratic Party nominee for president in 2008, conservatives began inquiring what, exactly, a “community organizer” does.

That led to a surge of interest in Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, a secular Bible among Barack Obama’s cohort of left-wing radicals in Chicago. In the White House, as aide Valerie Jarrett so memorably put it, Obama remained a community organizer, using his old tactics to push his agenda.

Now that they have been relegated to the opposition, Obama and the Democrats are not only using the same old Alinskyite tactics, but amplifying them through the media, who will never forgive President Donald Trump for winning the election. (Far from retiring quietly, Obama has been swift to criticize his successor and encourage left-wing protests against his policies.)

Here are just a few examples of Alinsky’s rules being put into practice in an effort to bring down the Trump administration.

“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” During the 2016 election, the media tried to stop Trump from winning by focusing on his personal flaws, real and imagined. That failed — so they are targeting the people around Trump.

The most unfortunate victim of this strategy is not former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who was forced to resign this week, but White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway, who is the most accessible member of the president’s media team, and one of the most effective. For making a flippant remark at the end of a Fox & Friends segment, in which she endorsed Ivanka Trump’s fashion line, she is now being singled out for investigation by the Office of Congressional Ethics. (What “investigation” is needed? She was on live television.)

The media are simply throwing whatever they can at the people around Trump, whether it is true or not. For example, bloggers and journalists smeared Deputy Assistant to the President Sebastian Gorka as a Nazi sympathizer, in keeping with the ongoing defamation of White House Chief Strategist Stephen K. Bannon (both formerly of Breitbart News) as a “white nationalist” and worse.

Sometimes the attacks are not only false, but also personally abusive, such as a recent article in Fusion targeting White House speechwriter and policy guru, Stephen Miller: “Why does Stephen Miller sound like such a dick? A voice coach explains.” MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough’s attacks on Miller have become so openly hostile to Miller, and so personal in nature (“my young, little Miller”) that even the Washington Postseemed genuinely taken aback by the Morning Joe host’s criticisms.

It is worth noting that the media did not press for the resignation of any of the Obama administration officials associated with much more serious scandals — Benghazi, the IRS scandal and the NSA scandal come to mind — even when officials admitted that they had misled Congress and the public. Now, the media are constantly searching for personalities they can pillory as proxies for the Trump administration as a whole.

“Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” In the weeks after Election Day, Saturday Night Live contented itself with weepy tributes to Hillary Clinton. Now, however, it has returned to comedic form in ridiculing President Trump and his staff. There is nothing wrong with that — and Melissa McCarthy’s impersonation of White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer is funny — but what is interesting is that mainstream news outlets, such as CNN, often spend the next several days after each new sketch reporting and re-running Saturday Night Live segments as news.

Politico recently piled on with an entirely speculative report that SaturdayNight Live could actually force the dismissal of the White House staffers it has been targeting, including Spicer. The obvious goal of such “fake news” stories is turn entertainment into a political weapon against the Trump administration.

“If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its [positive] counterside.” What Alinsky meant was that tactics that would ordinarily be abhorrent — say, rioting on a university campus, or telling the public that members of the government were “Nazis” — would be tolerated, and even celebrated, once they had been proven successful.

The current Democratic Party strategy is not to reach out to the voters they have lost over the past several years, but rather to make the country appear ungovernable, hoping that voters then turn to the Democrats for relief.

In recent protests at Los Angeles International Airport, for instance, Mayor Eric Garcetti not only joined demonstrators in solidarity, but did so at a time when protesters were blocking traffic and disrupting travel. He was perfectly willing to harm his own city for political gain — normally objectionable, except that it worked.

These tactics will not fade because of one resignation. Alinksy, after all, advised his acolytes to “keep the pressure on.” What is happening today will continue throughout the Trump administration. The government, and the conservative voters who are expecting it to deliver, will have to be just as tough, and even stronger, in the face of Alinskyite attacks.

Several intelligence insiders have come forward over the past few days to describe a “shadow government” of Obama holdovers leaking information to derail the Trump presidency, with National Security Adviser Mike Flynn’s resignation their first great success.

There are even allegations that former President Barack Obama himself is actively involved, citing his establishment of a command center in Washington and continuing involvement with activist organizations.

Retired Lt. Colonel Tony Schaffer, formerly a CIA-trained defense intelligence officer, said in a Fox Business appearance on Wednesday: “I put this right at the feet of John Brennan, and Jim Clapper, and I would even go so far as to say the White House was directly involved before they left.” He also mentioned Ben Rhodes:

Schaffer said it was clear that sensitive information that could compromise U.S. intelligence-gathering methods was divulged to the media as part of the campaign to bring down Flynn, by people who had access to beyond Top Secret material. That should narrow the list of suspects considerably.

The Washington Free Beaconquoted “multiple sources in and out of the White House” on Tuesday to describe a “secret, months-long campaign by former Obama administration confidantes to handicap President Donald Trump’s national security apparatus and preserve the nuclear deal with Iran.”

Since all news coverage is now driven by leaks of dubious accuracy from anonymous sources seemingly above evaluation, it seems only fair to entertain some insiders who wish to leak on the leakers.

According to the Free Beacon’s sources, the Obama loyalists are highly organized, under the direction of former Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes, famed for his ability to sell false narratives about Iran to credulous reporters. His critique of media types as young “know nothings” whose only experience “consists of being around political campaigns” would seem validated by a press corps that eagerly runs with just about anything an anonymous source hostile to Trump feeds them.

Rhodes shoveled a lot of manure to cultivate the Iran nuclear deal, and he is not going to let it go without a fight. According to the Free Beacon’s sources – one of whom is identified as a “veteran foreign policy insider who is close to Flynn and the White House” – Flynn was targeted because he was preparing to “publicize many of the details about the nuclear deal that had been intentionally hidden by the Obama administration as part of its effort to garner support for the deal.”

Another official who purportedly sits on the National Security Council said “the drumbeat of leaks of sensitive material related to General Flynn has been building since he was named to his position,” and his resignation was “not the result of a series of random events.”

“Last night’s resignation was their first major win, but unless the Trump people get serious about cleaning house, it won’t be the last,” warned a third source, suggesting these Obama loyalists are just getting warmed up.

The American people don’t get to vote on shadow governments or Deep State hierarchies, we don’t get to evaluate their credibility, and we don’t get to ask them follow-up questions. A good follow-up question for the Free Beacon’s unnamed sources would be how knocking out Flynn could guarantee the continuing secrecy of the damaging Iran deal information he was intent on divulging. Won’t the next National Security Adviser, or maybe President Trump himself, spill those beans if rolling back the Iran deal is still a presidential priority? Or is Flynn’s demise supposed to intimidate others from messing with the Iran deal?

Appearing on Breitbart News DailyWednesday morning, retired Lt. General William “Jerry” Boykin said he didn’t think a “coup” from the Deep State was in progress, but he was quite comfortable with the idea of an organized group of Obama holdovers working to undermine the new administration. He suggested the actions that led to President Trump firing Acting Attorney General Sally Yates were part of the “setup.”

Boykin said it was not surprising that officials left over from a prior administration would be “up to no good,” and would work “preserve the legacy of the last president” by making trouble. Like the Washington Free Beacon’s sources, he thought Flynn’s resignation was just the beginning of their efforts unless President Trump weeds them out.

The difference between Boykin’s view of nearly inevitable mischief from holdovers, and the WFB’s more conspiratorial account of an aggressive cell of saboteurs, boils down to organization and scope. It’s the difference between a few relics of the past presidency who will be gone soon, and a persistent shadow government with designs on anything from advancing a few policy preferences to destroying the legitimacy of the new administration.

It’s easy to imagine players in a shadow government sticking together, imagining themselves as brave resistance fighters against the Trump tyranny, which only exists because Russia stole the election from Hillary Clinton. That’s a fantasy that has become absolutely pervasive in left-wing culture today.

Furthermore, these are holdovers from an administration that believed it was on a messianic mission to “fundamentally transform America,” as the former president famously put it. They can easily make common cause with longtime bureaucrats who disdain “populist” crusades against unaccountable Big Government. Very little sinister collusion is necessary when everyone is already on the same page.

Other common theories say the leaks came from career intelligence officials who believe Trump is dangerous and must be undermined to protect national security, or the entrenched bureaucrats of a “Deep State” protecting their turf from Trump’s “Drain the Swamp” agenda. Those theories could be true as well. Rogue intel officers and Deep State warriors would be natural allies for the Obama holdovers.

Paul Sperry at the New York Posttakes the shadow government idea even further and suggests Barack Obama himself is still actively running the show, which includes not just whisper campaigns in Washington, but street theater across the nation:

When former President Barack Obama said he was “heartened” by anti-Trump protests, he was sending a message of approval to his troops. Troops? Yes, Obama has an army of agitators — numbering more than 30,000 — who will fight his Republican successor at every turn of his historic presidency. And Obama will command them from a bunker less than two miles from the White House.

In what’s shaping up to be a highly unusual post-presidency, Obama isn’t just staying behind in Washington. He’s working behind the scenes to set up what will effectively be a shadow government to not only protect his threatened legacy, but to sabotage the incoming administration and its popular “America First” agenda.

He’s doing it through a network of leftist nonprofits led by Organizing for Action. Normally you’d expect an organization set up to support a politician and his agenda to close up shop after that candidate leaves office, but not Obama’s OFA. Rather, it’s gearing up for battle, with a growing war chest and more than 250 offices across the country.

Sperry points out that Obama is still very actively involved in OFA, which has piled up $40 million in contributions since it formally ceased to be “Obama for America” in 2013 – and it’s just one of a network of Obama organizations.

It doesn’t take a lot of manpower to keep the Beltway leak machine running. News coverage leading up to Flynn’s resignation referred to anonymous sources dozens of times, but it is likely the same people were leaking to multiple news organizations. We’re probably looking at a fairly small group of highly motivated loyalists with extensive media connections.

Their work is made far easier by active collusion from Big Media, of course. One of the most curious details about the final round of anti-Flynn stories is that much of what they revealed was old news, and the material tucked away deep inside the stories helped Flynn’s cause, no matter what the alarming headlines said.

A few people tried to point this out on social media, but their voices were drowned out by the deafening stampede to destroy Flynn and smear the rest of the Trump administration:

With that kind of help from partisan media, it doesn’t take much of a “conspiracy” to undermine the White House. The media won’t think of it as a conspiracy at all. It’s just people they’ve known for years, fellow travelers they socialize with, slipping them a little juicy gossip about a president they mutually loathe.

The reality of a “shadow government” is much less dramatic than the name would imply – just a handful of people with lots of reporters in their address books, using strategic leaks to twist the dials on the Beltway media pressure cooker. Until the White House can find them and neutralize them, it should be very careful about giving them anything to work with.

Bannon was recently named Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor by President-elect Donald Trump.

Presented with selective quotes from Breitbart articles and Bannon’s past statements, Pollak challenged Inskeep to defend NPR’s taxpayer-funded racial programming, including Code Switch, a series that focuses obsessively on race, and which called the results of the 2016 election “nostalgia for a whiter America.”

INSKEEP: Let’s hear a defense of Steve Bannon. He’s the campaign manager for Donald Trump, now slated for a top post at the White House — campaign CEO, to be correct. He has been fiercely criticized because Bannon previously ran Breitbart, a website that Bannon described as “the platform for the alt-right,” a name that encompasses white nationalists and others embracing white identity politics.

Joel Pollak has worked with Steve Bannon. He is Senior Editor-at-Large for Breitbart, and he’s with us now from our studios at NPR West in Culver City, California. Good morning.

POLLAK: Good morning.

INSKEEP: Thanks for coming over early, really appreciate it. Now, people have heard a lot the last couple days about Bannon’s statements, or statements on Breitbart. But before we get into that, I want you to round out the picture of this guy. You know him. What are people missing?

POLLAK: Steve Bannon is a fantastic manager. He helped Breitbart grow fantastically, to the point where we have 250 million page views per month. He is a leader with vision, he’s very disciplined, he insists on excellence from those around him. He’s also very open to debate and challenge as long as you bring facts and data to the table. And he has no prejudices. He treats people equally, and in fact during my time working closely with him at Breitbart for five years, he sought out people from diverse backgrounds, and gave them a voice at Breitbart. so I —

INSKEEP: Why do you — go ahead.

POLLAK: I think he’s a fantastic choice. I think he’s, first of all, from a conservative perspective at least, a national hero. Because in helping Donald Trump win, he’s helped defend the Supreme Court and the Constitution. And I think Americans can take heart in the fact that you have someone who’s so calm under pressure in the White House. You know, people tend to think of everything in political terms —

INSKEEP: Let me just stop you there. Because I do want to ask about something that you said. You were talking about facts and data and how he ran Breitbart. Why did he make Breitbart “the platform for the alt-right”?

POLLAK: You know, all I can speak to is the content on the website. And the only “alt-right” content we have is a single article out of tens of thousands of articles, which is a journalistic article about the alt-right by Milo Yiannopoulos, and Allum Bokhari, which basically went into this movement, and tried to figure out what it was all about. [Article here] That’s not racist, that’s journalism.

INSKEEP: Well let me ask about some articles that I have been reading. There’s been a lot of mention of an article defending the Confederate flag. The headline was, “Hoist it High and Proud.” It was put out after last year’s shootings in Charleston, South Carolina. [Article here] Why was it a good idea to publish that?

POLLAK: Well, there’s an argument to be made — and it was not just made at Breitbart, it was made at National Review [article here] and other places — that the Charleston shooting had nothing to do with historical attachment to the Confedereate flag, that this was an individual who acted on his own motives, and that there was a case in terms of heritage and history. Now, that’s not a case I agree with, but I don’t agree with everything on Breitbart, and you don’t have to agree, to work there or to enjoy the content on the website.

INSKEEP: I want to mention, you know — actually, putting controversial opinions out there is a perfectly fine idea. We’ve had David Duke on this program. But we fact-check. We try to question, we put in context. This particular article goes on to make a string of statements. There’s a reference about President Obama and Kenya. There’s also a statement: “The Confederacy was not a callous conspiracy to enforce slavery, but a patriotic and idealistic cause.” A little bit of research would show that Alexander Stevens, the vice president of the Confederacy, declared the cause was slavery. I mean, why put these things out there?

POLLAK: I think that we can talk about individual articles out of the tens of thousands at Breitbart, but, you know, NPR is taxpayer-funded, and has an entire section of its programming, a regular feature, called Code Switch, which from my perspective is a racist program. I’m looking here at the latest article, which aired on NPR, calling the election results “nostalgia for a whiter America.” [Article here] So NPR has racial and racist programming —

INSKEEP: Well, let me just mention —

POLLAK: — that I am required to pay for as a taxpayer. So, you know, you can read Breitbart, you can read something else — I don’t think that’s racist, to talk about the history of the Confederate flag. There are people who disagree with that, as a symbol, but you’re picking on one opinion article. Breitbart is a 24-hour news website that provides coverage from within a conservative worldview.

INSKEEP: Because we’ve got a limited amount of time, I do have to stop you there. We’ll just check a couple of facts. Local public radio stations do receive a small percentage of their funding from the government. And Code Switch has explored race and ethnicity from a wide variety of viewpoints. And, as we’ve said, having a wide variety of viewpoints is fine, as long as you’re checking your facts. Now, I want to ask a little bit more about what Bannon is going for, what he believes. This is a guy who’s talked about nationalist movements — I think he’d reject the label “white nationalist,” but he’s reached out to nationalist parties in Europe, like the French National Front, which has actually been fined for racist statements. Do you have any idea of what his strategy is, what his vision is?

POLLAK: I think his vision is to defend American interests. And I think you saw that reflected in some of the campaign themes that Donald Trump used, of resisting elites and resisting international agreements and international bodies that are against the American interest. There’s a lot of what goes on at the United Nations, for example, which is designed to undermine American interests, and unfortunately — from our perspective, at least — President Obama often colluded with these international institutions, like taking the Iran Deal to the UN Security Council before taking it to Congress. That is the opposite of the way it should be. And so I think Steve Bannon’s orientation, and Donald Trump’s orientation, would be toward putting America first in those discussions.

INSKEEP: Well, let me ask you another thing. And this is another Bannon quote — and we can pull out quotes, but it’s a quote that he made in a 2011 radio interview that gets to maybe what he wants to do inside the country? He criticized feminists. He said, “Women that would lead this country would be pro-family, they would have husbands, they would love their children” — and I’m just reading the quote here — “they wouldn’t be a bunch of dykes that came from the Seven Sisters schools.” [Article here] What’s he driving at, there?

POLLAK: I don’t know. But there’s a political correctness in this country that would say that if you said that once on a radio show, that you should be drummed out of public life. I would defy you to find a person in the LGBTQ community who has not used that term, either in an endearing sense, or in a flippant, jovial, colloquial sense. I don’t think you can judge Steve Bannon’s views. What you can judge him [on] is how he conducted himself at Breitbart. And he brought a gay conservative journalist like Milo Yiannopoulos on board. And Milo has brought gay conservatives into the media, into the debate. At the Republican National Convention, Breitbart co-hosted a party for gay conservatives. So that’s not something you do if you’re anti-gay. And Andrew Breitbart was the same. Andrew Breitbart broke through at CPAC, the conservative annual gathering, and helped GOProud get a foothold there —

INSKEEP: Oh, Breitbart, that was the former publisher of Breitbart.

POLLAK: Right, the founder.

INSKEEP: I want to invite a yes/no question, because we’ve just got a few seconds here. This is a question that’s just on a lot of people’s minds. Is Steve Bannon — and by extension, Donald Trump — winking at racists? Not quite embracing their views, but trying to get their support and their votes? Yes or no?

INSKEEP: He is Senior Editor-at-Large for Breitbart News. That’s a publication that was once run by Stephen Bannon, who is now slated for a senior position in President-elect Donald Trump’s White House.

Why I Now Feel Compelled To Vote For Trump

Last time a Clinton was on the ballot, I voted for Ross Perot. My vote didn’t deny Bob Dole the White House, but I confess I felt a smug sense of satisfaction in “refusing to settle.” I sure showed them, didn’t I?

I haven’t been as vocal as other “Never Trump” writers, but neither have I hidden my dislike or tempered my criticism. In a field of 17 Republican candidates, Donald Trump wouldn’t have been my 18th choice. I’m still not a fan. But they didn’t just ask me; they asked everyone. And more of everyone chose Donald Trump.

I couldn’t do it, I just couldn’t. For countless reasons I’ve covered over the last year, I dug in my heels and proudly basked in my self-satisfaction. I still defended Trump in this column and on social media when he was wrongly attacked by the left and the media, but I was steadfast in my opposition to the man.

So what changed?

Not Trump. He still gives rambling speeches with little focus and spends far too much time defending himself against insignificant slights when he should be focusing on policy (though his ethics reform proposal is excellent and will irritate all the people in Washington who need to be irritated).

Hillary hasn’t changed either. At least not in who she is – a corrupt, self-serving liar willing to do or say anything to win and/or sell out to the highest bidder. There isn’t enough Saudi Arabian money in the Clinton Foundation to get me to vote for someone who got rich off “public service” and a “commitment to helping the poor.”

No, what’s changed is me. Not through introspection and reflection, but through watching the sickening display of activism perpetrated by a covert army with press credentials.

Bias has always been a factor in journalism. It’s nearly impossible to remove. Humans have their thoughts, and keeping them out of your work is difficult. But 2016 saw the remaining veneer of credibility, thin as it was, stripped away and set on fire.

More than anything, I can’t sit idly by and allow these perpetrators of fraud to celebrate and leak tears of joy like they did when they helped elect Barack Obama in 2008. I have to know I weighed in not only in writing but in the voting booth.

The media needs to be destroyed. And although voting for Trump won’t do it, it’s something. Essentially, I am voting for Trump because of the people who don’t want me to, and I believe I must register my disgust with Hillary Clinton.

I am not of the mindset that any vote not for Trump is a vote for Hillary, but a vote for Trump is a vote against Hillary. And I need to vote against Hillary. I need to vote against the media.

After the last debate, when no outlet “fact checked” Hillary’s lie that her opposition to the Heller decision had anything to do with children, or her lie that the State Department didn’t lose $6 billion under her leadership, I couldn’t hold out any longer.

A Trump administration at least will include people I trust in positions that matter. I don’t know if they will be able to hold him completely in check, but I know a Clinton administration will include people who have been her co-conspirators in corruption, and there won’t even be a media to hold her accountable.

The Wikileaks emails have exposed an arrogant cabal of misery profiteers who hold everyone, even their fellow travelers deemed not pure enough, in contempt. These bigots who’ve made their fortune from government service should be kept as far away from the levers of power as the car keys should be kept from anyone named Kennedy on a Friday night. My one vote against it will not be enough, but it’s all I can do and I have to do all I can do.

I won’t stop being critical of Trump when he deserves it; I won’t pretend someone is handing out flowers when they’re shoveling BS. But I’d rather have BS shoveled out of a president than our tax dollars shoveled to a president’s friends and political allies.

The Project Vertias [sic] videos exposed a corrupt political machine journalists would have been proud to expose in the past. The Wikileaks emails pulled back the curtain on why that didn’t happen – journalists are in on it. I can’t pretend otherwise, and I have no choice but to oppose it.

This isn’t a call to arms for “Never Trumpers” to follow suit; this is a choice I had to make for myself after much reflection. I wouldn’t presume to tell others how to act any more than I would accept the same from someone else. I would encourage them to consider what awaits the country should Hillary win. If they can’t vote against her by voting for him, at least spend these last two weeks of the election directing their ire toward Clinton.

Although most are principled, far too many “Never Trump” conservatives spend more of their time attacking him than pointing out her corruption. I get it – in him, you see the fight you’ve been a part of being betrayed, and that leaves a mark.

I’m not saying you should support him, but you shouldn’t lose sight of the importance of opposing her. If, or when, Hillary Clinton takes the oath of office, she needs to have as little support as possible. Frankly, she needs to be damaged. The mainstream media won’t do it; they’re in on it.

This is my choice, what I must do. Each person has to come to this decision on their own terms. And the fact remains there simply aren’t enough “Never Trump” Republicans to make up Trump’s current deficit, and that’s on him. But I know what I’ve been wrestling with these past few weeks is not unique to me. And I don’t know about you, but I simply cannot sit around knowing there was something else I could have done to oppose Hillary Clinton and I didn’t do it.

A simple protest vote for a third party or a write-in of my favorite comic book character might feel good for a moment. It might even give me a sense of moral superiority that lasts until her first executive order damaging something I hold dear – or her first Supreme Court nominee. But the sting that will follow will far outlive that temporary satisfaction.

I oppose much of what Donald Trump has said, but I oppose everything Hillary Clinton has done and wants to do. And what someone says, no matter how objectionable, is less important than what someone does, especially when it’s so objectionable. A personal moral victory won’t suffice when the stakes are so high. As such, I am compelled to vote against Hillary by voting for the only candidate with any chance whatsoever of beating her – Donald Trump.

As reporters focus on Trump, they miss new details on Clinton’s rotten record.

If average voters turned on the TV for five minutes this week, chances are they know that Donald Trump made lewd remarks a decade ago and now stands accused of groping women.

But even if average voters had the TV on 24/7, they still probably haven’t heard the news about Hillary Clinton: That the nation now has proof of pretty much everything she has been accused of.

It comes from hacked emails dumped by WikiLeaks, documents released under the Freedom of Information Act, and accounts from FBI insiders. The media has almost uniformly ignored the flurry of bombshells, preferring to devote its front pages to the Trump story. So let’s review what amounts to a devastating case against a Clinton presidency.

Start with a June 2015 email to Clinton staffers from Erika Rottenberg, the former general counsel of LinkedIn. Ms. Rottenberg wrote that none of the attorneys in her circle of friends “can understand how it was viewed as ok/secure/appropriate to use a private server for secure documents AND why further Hillary took it upon herself to review them and delete documents.” She added: “It smacks of acting above the law and it smacks of the type of thing I’ve either gotten discovery sanctions for, fired people for, etc.”

Opinion Journal Video

Former Foreign Service Officer James Roberts on how the State Department rewarded Clinton Foundation donors in Haiti. Photo credit: Getty Images.

A few months later, in a September 2015 email, a Clinton confidante fretted that Mrs. Clinton was too bullheaded to acknowledge she’d done wrong. “Everyone wants her to apologize,” wrote Neera Tanden, president of the liberal Center for American Progress. “And she should. Apologies are like her Achilles’ heel.”

Clinton staffers debated how to evade a congressional subpoena of Mrs. Clinton’s emails—three weeks before a technician deleted them. The campaign later employed a focus group to see if it could fool Americans into thinking the email scandal was part of the Benghazi investigation (they are separate) and lay it all off as a Republican plot.

A senior FBI official involved with the Clinton investigation told Fox News this week that the “vast majority” of career agents and prosecutors working the case “felt she should be prosecuted” and that giving her a pass was “a top-down decision.”

The Obama administration—the federal government, supported by tax dollars—was working as an extension of the Clinton campaign. The State Department coordinated with her staff in responding to the email scandal, and the Justice Department kept her team informed about developments in the court case.

Worse, Mrs. Clinton’s State Department, as documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show, took special care of donors to the Clinton Foundation. In a series of 2010 emails, a senior aide to Mrs. Clinton asked a foundation official to let her know which groups offering assistance with the Haitian earthquake relief were “FOB” (Friends of Bill) or “WJC VIPs” (William Jefferson Clinton VIPs). Those who made the cut appear to have been teed up for contracts. Those who weren’t? Routed to a standard government website.

The leaks show that the foundation was indeed the nexus of influence and money. The head of the Clinton Health Access Initiative, Ira Magaziner, suggested in a 2011 email that Bill Clinton call Sheikh Mohammed of Saudi Arabia to thank him for offering the use of a plane. In response, a top Clinton Foundation official wrote: “Unless Sheikh Mo has sent us a $6 million check, this sounds crazy to do.”

The entire progressive apparatus—the Clinton campaign and boosters at the Center for American Progress—appears to view voters as stupid and tiresome, segregated into groups that must either be cajoled into support or demeaned into silence. We read that Republicans are attracted to Catholicism’s “severely backwards gender relations” and only join the faith to “sound sophisticated”; that Democratic leaders such as Bill Richardson are “needy Latinos”; that Bernie Sanders supporters are “self-righteous”; that the only people who watch Miss America “are from the confederacy”; and that New York Mayor Bill de Blasio is “a terrorist.”

The leaks also show that the press is in Mrs. Clinton’s pocket. Donna Brazile, a former Clinton staffer and a TV pundit, sent the exact wording of a coming CNN town hall question to the campaign in advance of the event. Other media allowed the Clinton camp to veto which quotes they used from interviews, worked to maximize her press events and offered campaign advice.

Mrs. Clinton has been exposed to have no core, to be someone who constantly changes her position to maximize political gain. Leaked speeches prove that she has two positions (public and private) on banks; two positions on the wealthy; two positions on borders; two positions on energy. Her team had endless discussions about what positions she should adopt to appease “the Red Army”—i.e. “the base of the Democratic Party.”

Voters might not know any of this, because while both presidential candidates have plenty to answer for, the press has focused solely on taking out Mr. Trump. And the press is doing a diligent job of it.

Trump is headed for a win, says professor who has predicted 30 years of presidential outcomes correctly

Who will win the 2016 presidential election? This professor has predicted correctly for 32 years

Allan Lichtman, a distinguished professor of history at American University, created his “13 Keys to the White House” more than 30 years ago—and he’s ready to predict who will win in 2016. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

Nobody knows for certain who will win on Nov. 8 — but one man is pretty sure: Professor Allan Lichtman, who has correctly predicted every presidential election since 1984.

When we sat down in May, he explained how he comes to a decision. Lichtman’s prediction isn’t based on horse-race polls, shifting demographics or his own political opinions. Rather, he uses a system of true/false statements he calls the “Keys to the White House” to determine his predicted winner.

Party Mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections.

Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.

Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.

Third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign.

Short-term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.

Long-term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.

Policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.

Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.

Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.

Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.

Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.

Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.

Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.

Lichtman, a distinguished professor of history at American University, sat down with The Fix this week to reveal who he thinks will win in November and why 2016 was the most difficult election to predict yet. Our conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

THE FIX: Can you tell me about the keys, and how you use them to evaluate the election from the point where — I assume it’s very murky a year or two out, and they start to crystallize over the course of the election.

LICHTMAN: “The Keys to the White House” is a historically based prediction system. I derived the system by looking at every American presidential election from 1860 to 1980, and have since used the system to correctly predict the outcomes of all eight American presidential elections from 1984 to 2012.

The keys are 13 true/false questions, where an answer of “true” always favors the reelection of the party holding the White House, in this case the Democrats. And the keys are phrased to reflect the basic theory that elections are primarily judgments on the performance of the party holding the White House. And if six or more of the 13 keys are false — that is, they go against the party in power — they lose. If fewer than six are false, the party in power gets four more years.

So people who hear just the surface-level argument there might say, well, President Obama has a 58 percent approval rating, doesn’t that mean the Democrats are a shoo-in? Why is that wrong?

It absolutely does not mean the Democrats are a shoo-in. First of all, one of my keys is whether or not the sitting president is running for reelection, and right away, they are down that key. Another one of my keys is whether or not the candidate of the White House party is, like Obama was in 2008, charismatic. Hillary Clinton doesn’t fit the bill.

The keys have nothing to do with presidential approval polls or horse-race polls, with one exception, and that is to assess the possibility of a significant third-party campaign.

What about Donald Trump on the other side? He’s not affiliated with the sitting party, but has his campaign been an enigma in terms of your ability to assess this election?

Donald Trump has made this the most difficult election to assess since 1984. We have never before seen a candidate like Donald Trump, and Donald Trump may well break patterns of history that have held since 1860.

We’ve never before seen a candidate who’s spent his life enriching himself at the expense of others. He’s the first candidate in our history to be a serial fabricator, making up things as he goes along. Even when he tells the truth, such as, “Barack Obama really was born in the U.S.,” he adds two lines, that Hillary Clinton started the birther movement, and that he finished it, even though when Barack Obama put out his birth certificate, he didn’t believe it. We’ve never had a candidate before who not just once, but twice in a thinly disguised way, has incited violence against an opponent. We’ve never had a candidate before who’s invited a hostile foreign power to meddle in American elections. We’ve never had a candidate before who’s threatened to start a war by blowing ships out of the water in the Persian Gulf if they come too close to us. We’ve never had a candidate before who has embraced as a role model a murderous, hostile foreign dictator. Given all of these exceptions that Donald Trump represents, he may well shatter patterns of history that have held for more than 150 years, lose this election even if the historical circumstances favor it.

We’re a little bit less than seven weeks out from the election today. Who do you predict will win in November?

Based on the 13 keys, it would predict a Donald Trump victory. Remember, six keys and you’re out, and right now the Democrats are out — for sure — five keys.

Key 1 is the party mandate — how well they did in the midterms. They got crushed.

Key number 3 is, the sitting president is not running.

Key number 7, no major policy change in Obama’s second term like the Affordable Care Act.

Key number 11, no major smashing foreign policy success.

And Key number 12, Hillary Clinton is not a Franklin Roosevelt.

One more key and the Democrats are down, and we have the Gary Johnson Key. One of my keys would be that the party in power gets a “false” if a third-party candidate is anticipated to get 5 percent of the vote or more. In his highest polling, Gary Johnson is at about 12 to 14 percent. My rule is that you cut it in half. That would mean that he gets six to seven, and that would be the sixth and final key against the Democrats.

So very, very narrowly, the keys point to a Trump victory. But I would say, more to the point, they point to a generic Republican victory, because I believe that given the unprecedented nature of the Trump candidacy and Trump himself, he could defy all odds and lose even though the verdict of history is in his favor. So this would also suggest, you know, the possibility this election could go either way. Nobody should be complacent, no matter who you’re for, you gotta get out and vote.

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Do you think the fact that Trump is not a traditional Republican — certainly not an establishment Republican, from a rhetorical or policy perspective — contributes to that uncertainty over where he fits in with the standard methodology for evaluating the Keys?

I think the fact that he’s a bit of a maverick, and nobody knows where he stands on policy, because he’s constantly shifting. I defy anyone to say what his immigration policy is, what his policy is on banning Muslims, or whoever, from entering the United States, that’s certainly a factor. But it’s more his history in Trump University, the Trump Institute, his bankruptcies, the charitable foundation, of enriching himself at the expense of others, and all of the lies and dangerous things he’s said in this campaign, that could make him a precedent-shattering candidate.

It’s interesting, I don’t use the polls, as I’ve just explained, but the polls have very recently tightened. Clinton is less ahead than she was before, but it’s not because Trump is rising, it’s because Clinton is falling. He’s still around 39 percent in the polls. You can’t win if you can’t crack 40 percent.

As people realize the choice is not Gary Johnson, the only choice is between Trump and Clinton, those Gary Johnson supporters may move away from Johnson and toward Clinton, particularly those millennials. And, you know, I’ve seen this movie before. My first vote was in 1968, when I was the equivalent of a millennial, and lots of my friends, very liberal, wouldn’t vote for Hubert Humphrey because he was part of the Democratic establishment, and guess what? They elected Richard Nixon.

And, of course, as I have said for over 30 years, predictions are not endorsements. My prediction is based off a scientific system. It does not necessarily represent, in any way, shape or form, an Allan Lichtman or American University endorsement of any candidate. And of course, as a successful forecaster, I’ve predicted in almost equal measure both Republican and Democratic victories.

What Donald Trump is doing on the campaign trail

The GOP presidential nominee is out on the trail ahead of the general election in November.

Clint Eastwood: Donald Trump Challenging ‘Kiss-Ass Generation’

Actor-director Clint Eastwood believes that Donald Trump is benefiting from a trend in American culture by saying what he believes, despite criticism from all sides.

“He’s onto something, because secretly everybody’s getting tired of political correctness, kissing up,” Clint Eastwood said in an interview with Esquire. “That’s the kiss-ass generation we’re in right now. We’re really in a p**sy generation. Everybody’s walking on eggshells.”

Eastwood specifically cited Trump’s comments criticizing a judge who was born to Mexican parents, but indicated he was tired of the media fueled controversy

Video: Donald Trump Fires Back at George Clooney Over “Never Be President” Comment

“He’s said a lot of dumb things. So have all of them. Both sides,” he said “But everybody —the press and everybody’s going, ‘Oh, well, that’s racist,’ and they’re making a big hoodoo out of it. Just f***ng get over it. It’s a sad time in history.”

Eastwood said that he hadn’t spoken to Trump about an endorsement, and hadn’t endorsed anyone for president. He clarified that he didn’t agree with everything that Trump said, but indicated that it was refreshing to see an unfiltered politician.

“He’s just saying what’s on his mind and sometimes it’s not so good,” he said. “And sometimes it’s … I mean, I can understand where he’s coming from, but I don’t always agree with it.”

But given the choice between Trump or Clinton, Eastwood suggested that he would probably vote for Trump because Clinton represented more of what Obama did to the country.

“I’d have to go for Trump … you know, ’cause she’s declared that she’s gonna follow in Obama’s footsteps,” he said, calling Clinton “a tough voice to listen to for four years.”

Eastwood criticized political figures who were using their position to make money, citing “too much funny business on both sides of the aisle.”

“She’s made a lot of dough out of being a politician,” he said, referring to Clinton.

Overall, however, Eastwood seemed dissatisfied with both Trump and Clinton.

“Everybody is boring everybody. It’s boring to listen to all this s**t. It’s boring to listen to these candidates,” he said.

He added that an ideal candidate should more understanding instead of trying to insult his way to victory.

“[G]et in there and get it done,” he advised, citing his father. “Kick ass and take names.”

Me: “I thought Erdogan [,Tayip] was the bad guy. He’s an Islamist fighting against secularism. I had heard of Gulen [,Fethullah] , but didn’t know anything about him. I suspected that he wanted to overthrow Islamism in Turkey. I’m confused.”

Nephew: Is taxpayer money from his schools being funneled into Hillary’s campaign though? I’ve read that from at least 3 articles, at least one says it’s quoting court documents.

Me: [After viewing the above video] The secularists in Turkey, what are left of them, follow Kemal [Mustafa Kemal Ataturk] who was also a secularist back in the early 20th century. Erdogan and Gulen are pro-jihadist, Islamic fundamentalists who both seek the return of shariah law and the Caliphate. They had a recent power split. Erdogan wants to be, essentially, the “Sultan of the Caliphate,” a return to the Ottoman Empire, before Kemal had secularized it. Gulen wants to run, essentially, the same Islamic State from his billions-dollars compound in the Poconos of Pennsylvania through the educational programs he has set up throughout many U.S. states, using taxpayer dollars.

Erdogan wants Gulen extradited to Turkey where he can imprison him, thus consolidating his sole power. The FBI has investigated Gulen, and is continuing to investigate him, but cannot pin him down for breaking any laws. The U.S., therefore, has no basis to extradite him.

The above Washington Times article is unabashedly pro-Erdogan and anti-Gulen. The large rally in Germany shows just how far-reaching is Erdogan’s influence in Europe, however Gulen has graduates of his schools placed throughout Turkey in business, legislative, police and judicial positions, too many for Erdogan to eliminate.

One thing for sure, the Kemal movement is dead, and Erdogan and Gulen are no friends to NATO. The migration of ISIS jihadists from Syria to Turkey to Europe will continue. As far as Hillary’s Clinton Foundation connection to Gulen, I still know nothing about that.

Democrats are falling apart. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic National Convention (DNC) chairwoman, just hours ago resigned, one day before their “shining” four-day, DNC moment begins, for overseeing emails that included disparaging remarks about Bernie Sanders Jewishness and atheism (huh?). Hillary chose Tim Kaine (who?) as her VP running mate instead of the more progressive Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders. Kaine, a Catholic, is pro-life but stands for a woman’s choice (huh?). Longtime Democrats, being interviewed in the press, are turning to Trump instead of Obama (or a Democrat successor) for hope and “real” change.

Then there’s Hillary’s felonious handling of State Department emails (even though she skated through the FBI investigation without so much as a misdemeanor). At least, she was excoriated by FBI Chief James Comey before he refused to turn her over for indictment. To cap it off, two films have just premiered, “Clinton Cash” and “Hillary’s America,” which display the Clinton dirt in widescreen.

I believe that a sufficient number of Democrats will either vote for Trump or not vote at all.

If you’re a Democrat, admit it: You can’t stand the Clintons–Hillary or Bill. You’re in a dilemma. How will you take the bull by the horns and vote in a meaningful way? Will you vote for Trump, not at all, or waste your vote on a non-candidate?

Democrats will be keeping laxatives in business from now until the next election. –SAB

The liberal filmmaker shared his presidential prediction at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland during a special edition of the longtime HBO political panel program “Real Time with Bill Maher.”

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“I’m sorry to have to be the buzzkill here so early on, but I think Trump is going to win. I’m sorry,” the 62-year-old Moore proclaimed to gasps and boos from the progressive live audience. “Boo if you want.”

Moore’s rationale for a Trump victory includes angry white voters and the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union — known as Brexit — that sent shockwaves around the world in June.

“The middle of England is Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania,” he continued. “And Mitt Romney lost by 64 electoral votes. The total number of electoral votes in those states in the Rust Belt: 64. All [Trump] has to do is win those four states.”

President Obama won by 126 electoral votes over Mitt Romney in 2012. But if the aforementioned four states and the 64 electoral votes that go with them collectively were to be flipped, Romney would have won that election 270-268.

Earlier in the day, Moore was much more pointed in his backhanded praise of Trump.

“He knows how to manipulate a dumbed-down population,” he said at a press conference.

“The population of schools has been wrecked, and the news media is just insipid and stupid and doesn’t give the people the facts about what’s going on,” he explained, calling American voters, “easily manipulated.”

“He’s [Trump’s] not as stupid as he looks. You should take it very seriously,” the director of “Fahrenheit 911” and “Roger and Me” warned. “He knows the manipulation that’s going on here, and the use of propaganda and the way he’s doing it is just brilliant in the way that he is succeeding and has succeeded.”

According to the RealClearPolitics average, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are in a statistical dead heat nationally with 109 days to go until Election Day. Clinton’s lead is down to 2.7 points, within the margin of error.